My name is Emma and I am a nail polish addict...
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Wednesday, 22 August 2012

Pink and Slate gradient

This gradient uses my favourite pairing of colours, pink and grey.

The colours used for this were Matte Pink W7 and China Glaze Stone Cold, so all in all this should have been entirely matte, however....! I started off with usual base, two coats of original nail envy, then painted all my nails Matte Pink. The matte polish was taking longer than I had to spare to dry, I sponged the first nail and ended up with a real mess, so decided to Seche Vite the pink to dry it off. I then used a stripe of pink and a stripe of grey on a sponge and dabbed them on to get the gradient. I was going to leave it at this and have it matte, but as my cuticles were incredibly dry I knew the oil and hand creams would end up ruining the matte look, so added Seche Vite for a full shiny finish.

I loved this mani, I was going to add a layer of matte top coat to it, but never got chance as it started to chipped off the next day so I ended up removing it. One mistake I did make with this was using pink as my base when I wanted the slate at the bottom of the nail. I was bloody covered in Stone Cold by the time I'd got to colour built up correctly on the nail. Next time I'll definitely use the grey base and sponge over it with pink. The pink used is a very bright shade, almost neon when worn alone, sponging with grey did reduce the vibrancy of it. Since this mani I've had to super nubbin my nails again, I know they weren't particularly long but I have no free anymore: again this comes back to something I have mentioned a couple of times before, the broken finger and the subsequent damage it left on my nail. The hole is getting close to the free edge of the nail now, leaving it feeling loose, so I figured it was easier to go right back to basics and grow through than risk it falling off or having a very bad break.